Posts Tagged ‘Navy’

In Obama’s God damn America we do truly breathtakingly stupid things and then keep doing them until we collapse. And then of course we can also add a healthy mixture of Obama’s crony capitalist fascism:

This is going to help the Defense Department weather looming budget cuts, for sure. Teaming up with the Department of Agriculture (which has a cheery Rotary Club ring to it), the Navy has purchased 450,000 gallons of biofuel for about $16 a gallon, or about 4 times the price of its standard marine fuel, JP-5, which has been going for under $4 a gallon.

You won’t be surprised to learn that a member of Obama’s presidential transition team, T. J. Glauthier, is a “strategic advisor” at Solazyme, the California company that is selling a portion of the biofuel to the Navy. Glauthier worked – shock, shock – on the energy-sector portion of the 2009 stimulus bill.

The Navy sale isn’t Solazyme’s first trip to the public trough, of course. The company got a $21.8 million grant from the 2009 stimulus package.

Solazyme’s partner in the biofuel sale is Dynamic Fuels, a Louisiana company owned jointly by Tyson Foods and Tulsa-based Syntroleum. Tyson and Syntroleum are distinguished by having profitable lines of business that do not rely on government grants to unprofitable “green” projects. This does not make their biofuel product price-competitive with fossil fuels, however. (They were induced to develop biofuel manufacturing processes by a combination of subsidies and tax breaks.)

The Dynamic Fuels plant was opened for business in Geismar, LA in 2010, becoming by far the largest biofuels plant in North America – and reportedly, in combination with a plant in Finland, a producer of 94% of the world’s biofuels. This is great boosterism stuff, but the biofuels produced by Dynamic Fuels are still considerably more expensive than the fossil-fuel alternative. Dynamic Fuels has begun supplying aviation biofuel to KLM, the Dutch flag carrier, but of course, the use of more-expensive biofuels by commercial carriers has to be subsidized by governments.

If governments stopped subsidizing biofuels, their artificial “profitability” would disappear overnight. Price-wise, they can’t compete with fossil fuels. The day may come when they can, but subsidizing them while they don’t is not a method with any record of success for encouraging price efficiency. What it does instead is create languishing public dependencies and tremendous opportunities for cronyism, as demonstrated in the Solyndra scandal.

As the Institute for Energy Research article (top link) indicates, the US has enormous reserves of both conventional and unconventional oil and natural gas resources. Opening them up for exploitation would, among other things, ensure that the US armed forces could buy cheaper fuel – cheaper than today’s prices – produced in the USA. At a time when federal debt is spiraling and the Defense Department is facing budget cuts that are guaranteed to gut the fighting forces and render them ineffective, it seems to border on insane to eschew a ready, significantly cheaper alternative and require the armed services to quadruple what they pay for fuel as a proof of concept – apparently with the idea that the forces should buy more of the 4-times-as-expensive fuel. This is, after all, our national security we’re talking about.

Hopefully all that biofuel is for ships with names like “The USS Dodo Bird.” Because that’s the way we’re going under this president’s leadership. Or maybe the “USS Teapot Dome” in honor of Obama’s in-your-face blatant corruption.

Capt. Owen Honors was relieved of duty Tuesday as commander of the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise after he broadcast sexually charged videos taken aboard the ship, the Navy announced.

The videos, distributed on closed-circuit television during 2006 and 2007 deployments of the USS Enterprise, the Navy’s oldest nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, showed simulated masturbation, suggestive shower scenes with multiple women and gay slurs.

The Virginian-Pilot newspaper broke the story, publishing edited versions of the lewd videos on its website. The Navy Times released two additional lewd videos on its website Tuesday.

Adm. John C. Harvey Jr., commander of United States Fleet Forces Command, said Honors’ performance as commanding officer has been without incident but his “poor judgment” while serving as executive officer of the ship was inexcusable.

“After personally reviewing the videos created while serving as executive officer, I have lost confidence in Capt. Honors’ ability to lead effectively, and he is being held accountable for poor judgment and the inappropriate actions demonstrated in the videos that were created while he served as executive officer on Enterprise,” said Harvey.

“His profound lack of good judgment and professionalism while previously serving as executive officer on Enterprise calls into question his character and completely undermines his credibility to continue to serve effectively in command,” Harvey added.

Capt. Dee Mewbourne will be permanently assigned as the commanding officer of the Enterprise.

Navy officials said Honors will not be kicked out of the service, though it is possible later on, pending results of a longer investigation, that he could be asked to leave the Navy.

Honors attended the Naval Academy and taught at the Navy’s Top Gun flight school.

The military is looking for a few good men. You know, so it can destroy them and purge them and replace them with guys like Pvt. Bradley Manning.

One of the interesting things about this is that the Navy was well-aware of these videos for years – and only acted when they were leaked. Which is to say that Captain Honors was an excellent theater commander until political correctness turned him into a liability. Because it’s more important today that a military officer be politically correct than competent in battle. Another interesting thing is that these videos were leaked so soon after the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Almost as though open season of the hunting down of the military had just started.

Pentagon officials admit that overcoming anti-gay attitudes — or at least punishing them when they surface — has become more urgent since Congress last month repealed the 17-year-old law that bars homosexuals from serving openly.

I can’t begin to defend what Capt. Owen Honors did to anyone who did not serve and did not live in the military culture. I alluded to that culture in my statement:

In my “day” in the Army, soldiers in the infantry that I served in just would not have tolerated openly homosexual soldiers. There would have been blanket parties galore, until the gay-berets got the message that they were most definitely not wanted. I don’t know that that will happen today, but I just can’t imagine the mindset has changed that much in the years I’ve been out…

The military – and in particular the front-line combat units – is composed of young men. And these young men are of a particular sort: they are aggressive; they are black-and-white as regards right and wrong; they are highly sexualized as a result of their long tours and incredibly hard physical work mostly away from women and dating. And they constantly joke about homosexuality in a manner that clearly and forcefully disdains homosexuality.

“Most U.S. military units, especially those in combat, are kind of hyper-macho,” said a former Army infantry officer who has served in Iraq and Afghanistan. “In that environment, it’s not uncommon to hear homophobic slurs that would be unacceptable in larger societal discourse.”

And like it or hate it, those young, aggressive, black-and-white-thinking, sexualized and anti-homosexual men who fight and die for America are the kind of men who want – even need – the kind of tension-busters that Captain Honors provided to his sailors.

A Facebook fan page set up for supporters of the Enterprise was abuzz today with talk of the story, with many people commenting that they support Honors and appreciated his movies and humor.

One post read: “The XO movie night was one of the few things we looked forward to during deployment in ’06. It is a shame that this distraction has been stirred up now years later.”

I couldn’t even begin to tell you how many times my NCOs and officers made insulting references to homosexuality in front of the units they led and commanded. Other than that it was literally in the thousands of times. Heck, it was probably pretty near a thousand times in boot camp and advanced infantry training alone.

When DADT was repealed, some military veterans immediately began asking how long before the persecutions of combat leaders who didn’t want to see their military destroyed began.

The answer is about two weeks.

I’m sorry your career was destroyed, Captain Honors. I’m even more sorry that you will merely be the first of tens of thousands whose careers will be destroyed over this vile policy.

The liberals in power will not stop until the American military is as weak and useless as the European Unions. Call it the redistribution of strength, away from us and toward our enemies.

The only thing that is more immoral than the imposing of a gay military is when it was imposed – in the middle of a long and difficult war.

I tell you what: if Roosevelt had pulled this crap during World War II, we would be speaking German and slowly starving in Nazi death camps right now.

Seemingly every election day estimate predicting increasingly bad news for Democrats is met by an exponential rise in the cost to taxpayers for President Obama’s “I’m outta here” world tour. Coincidence?

Mumbai: The US would be spending a whopping $200 million (Rs. 900 crore approx) per day on President Barack Obama’s visit to the city.

“The huge amount of around $200 million would be spent on security, stay and other aspects of the Presidential visit,” a top official of the Maharashtra Government privy to the arrangements for the high-profile visit said.

About 3,000 people including Secret Service agents, US government officials and journalists would accompany the President. Several officials from the White House and US security agencies are already here for the past one week with helicopters, a ship and high-end security instruments.

And if the Democrats lose the Senate, expect another $50 million in room service tabs alone, Tea Party ingrates.

To put it in perspective, $200 million is enough money to buy a pair of Lanvin sneakers for over 370,000 Indians.

The president’s “carbon footprint felt ’round the world” tour will also utilize at least 40 aircraft, or as Al Gore calls it, “Wednesday.”

It could give a sense of superior American organisation, or be an indicator of a deep-set persecution complex. It could also be a manifestation of Uncle Sam’s penchant for a show of strength.

The matter pertains to US president Barack Obama’s planned visit to Mani Bhavan —the Gandhi museum — on November 6, soon after he reaches Mumbai. On Monday, US secret agents visited the museum to plan Obama’s security detail.

They were accompanied by officers of Mumbai Police and civic officials of the D ward (where Mani Bhavan is located). While inspecting the route and the buildings lining up the route to the museum, the Americans detected a skyscraper near Peddar road and also found the area to be highly populated.

Since it is difficult to monitor such a congested area, they came up with a quick solution which left the Indians accompanying them amazed: A bomb-proof over-ground tunnel — to be installed by US military engineers in just an hour.

The tunnel would be a kilometre long and measure 12ft by 12ft — enough to let Obama’s cavalcade pass through. The tunnel would be centrally air-conditioned, fitted with close-circuit television cameras, and will be heavily guarded at every point, including, of course, its entry and exit.

Details about when exactly the tunnel would be made were not forthcoming. But officials said that the structure would be dismantled immediately after Obama leaves the area.

Now, one might think, “Damn, that’s a lot of incredibly expensive work to protect the president for a meaningless visit to a museum. Maybe we should cancel that part of the itinerary.”

But no. This is Barack Obama, who has grown government that took more than 200 years to get this monstrous by an eye-popping 28% in just two short years. This is the guy who has spent trillions of dollars in debt-fueled spending. This is the guy for whom your money doesn’t matter.

So fine. It costs a gazillion dollars for Obama to see a museum. But it’s only your money.

I don’t know how much this trip to India is costing the taxpayers (or more precisely, the children’s children’s children’s children of the taxpayers). But I do know that the cost means absolutely nothing to Barry Hussein.

The firing of Juan Williams by government-funded liberal propagandist NPR as a demonstration of leftwing intolerance is getting a lot of attention.

But liberal intolerance is all around us. It crawls around this country like maggots crawling around a rotting carcass.

How about this exhibition of liberal “tolerance”: A union fired one of its own for wearing a hat and sweatshirt bearing the name “Bush” as the stagehand was working to prepare for an Obama rally at a university. Which is to say we’ve got quite an intolerance trifecta going on: union intolerance, Obama intolerance and university intolerance all at once.

The man was wearing the cap and sweatshirt honoring the USS George H.W. Bush, CVN 77, the aircraft carrier which his Navy son was serving upon.

He wasn’t trying to make any political statements. The man was just proud of his son for serving his country. And he wasn’t willing to dishonor his son’s service by treating the U.S.S. George H.W. Bush as though it merited shame.

So I guess it’s not just rabid frothing-at-the-mouth liberal intolerance of the name of Bush, but also of the United States Navy and of our men and women who serve their country, too.